Exercise can feel like torture. When you work out, you get sweaty, you can’t breathe, you stink, you ache, you’re weak and shaky and exhausted…. You’re well aware that regular exercise is absolutely crucial to good health, but with that much misery involved, how can anyone expect you to keep it up—let alone to ever enjoy it? Fear not, friends! You can learn to love exercise, and it’s easier than you think: All it takes is an attitude adjustment. Don’t worry, we’re not going to tell you to “Suck it up, buttercup.” Today, we’re serving up the knowledge and practical advice you need to reprogram your attitude towards exercise so that you can stop dreading and feeling guilty about your workouts and start actually looking forward to them. First things first: addressing the problem. Ever wonder why the thought of exercise always seems to fill you with dread? To find the answer, we’ll have to get neuroscientific. Why You Still Hate Exercise (Even Though You Haven’t Done It in Years) You may remember from science class that the brain is filled with special cells called neurons. Every time we have a thought, these neurons create connections with each other, which enables the brain to store memories. The more times you remember or think about something, the stronger the path between neurons becomes—sort of like how a path in the woods becomes clearer and less grassy the more times you walk over it. When you think the same kinds of thoughts over and over again, you are actually forming and reinforcing neural pathways inside your brain that cause those thought patterns to become habitual. Once you’ve already carved out a clear path for a certain thought to form in response to a given stimulus, your brain begins to follow that path by default every time it encounters that stimulus. This means that most of the time, your negative thoughts and feelings aren’t a choice so much as they are a reflex. If you’ve always thought of exercise as being difficult and unpleasant, you’ll continue to think that way until you make a conscious effort to retrain your brain. So how do you do that? Change Your Mind, Change Your Body The strategy is simple: Fake it ‘til you make it. It sounds foolish, but it really works—for all its complexity and sophistication, the human mind is surprisingly easy to “hack.” Start by paying attention to your own thoughts. What do you usually say to yourself in your own mind when you think about exercise? Is it something positive, or something negative? Chances are, it sounds something like this: “Ugh, I’ve put on a few pounds. I really should start working out to burn off all the food I’ve been pigging out on. If I don’t, I’ll never lose this weight. But I’m so tired after being at work all day, and exercising is really hard and uncomfortable. I’d rather just sit on the couch and watch TV.” That’s not your conscious mind talking—that’s your subconscious mind, the part that’s operating on auto-pilot and following the neural pathway you’ve carved out over time. When you catch yourself reflexively thinking these thoughts, take back control by telling yourself to stop. Then consciously replace your negative mode of thinking with a more positive one, like this: “My body is amazing! All day long my lungs, heart, kidneys, and the rest of my organs did their jobs perfectly, allowing me to do all the things I needed to do. Even though I feel a little tired, I owe it to my awesome body to spend some time working out. Besides, I really enjoy seeing what...

There are few easy solutions when it comes to improving your health, but eating more fiber may be one of the easiest. Read on to learn why fiber is so fab, and how to fit more fiber into your daily diet. What is Dietary Fiber? Dietary fiber is a nutrient that comes only from plants. It’s technically a type of carbohydrate, but although we can eat it, our bodies can’t actually digest it; instead, it passes through the digestive system more or less intact. The term “dietary fiber” actually includes about 25 different types of indigestible plant components, not all of which are technically fibers. Each of these plant components affects the body in a different way; for example, a component called inulin helps increase certain kinds of good bacteria in the gut, while a component called pectin helps lower cholesterol. There are two categories of dietary fiber: soluble fiber, which dissolves in water, and insoluble fiber, which doesn’t. The Benefits of Dietary Fiber 1. It facilitates weight loss. Because it isn’t digestible, fiber can’t be broken down by the body into simple sugars. This means that fiber contains fewer calories than other forms of carbohydrates. What’s more, fiber absorbs water and swells up inside the digestive tract, causing you to feel more full between mealtimes by triggering signals of satiety from the brain to the body. Eating more fiber and drinking plenty of water throughout the day is an easy way to control your appetite and boost your...

Beat the Heat and Check Your Feet It’s been said by fans of summer that “Life is better in flip-flops,” and you have to admit there’s nothing quite like the feel of warm sea water washing over your toes or a cool breeze caressing your feet on a hot day. If there’s any part of your body that deserves a vacation this summer, it’s your hardworking feet. So while you’re flip-flopping around and enjoying...

Introducing a Medical Miracle What if we told you there was a way to extend your lifespan by delaying or completely preventing the types of chronic illness that lead to an early death? Would you assume we were talking about an experimental wonder drug, or maybe some type of expensive treatment only available overseas? If so, you’d be wrong. The real answer is much simpler, safer, and more affordable than that, and you can...